"One day, when it is time to stand before my God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left and that I could say… 'I used everything you gave me.'" ~ Erma Bombeck

Classmates Bridge a Watergate Rift

This afternoon, I watched a DVD about The Duke of Windsor, followed by one of my favorite books/movies, All The President’s Men. What an incredible movie, and book. Woodward and Bernstein are two of my favorite writers. The movie is packed with great stars – aside from Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford – there’s Polly Holliday, Jason Robards, Hal Holbrook, Jane Alexander (while she was also filming her role as Eleanor Roosevelt), Merideth Baxter, Ned Beatty, Stephen Collins, F. Murray Abraham, and others… wow! What a fantastic movie.

May 31st, 2005, I can remember the breaking news coming across my computer and television… “Deep Throat is revealed…” Mark Felt, former assistant director of the FBI, admitted to being the mystery man known as “Deep Throat.” There had been speculation, but Felt always denied it.

The story below is amazing….

By DEAN E. MURPHY

Published: June 5, 2005

SAN FRANCISCO, June 4 – Nicholas T. Jones (left) and Jarett A. Nixon (right), law school classmates have met at an intersection of history.

They have practiced speaking Spanish together, and at one point last year, Mr. Nixon, 28, tried to recruit Mr. Jones, 23, to work on a law journal at the school, the Hastings College of the Law.”

He’s a good guy,” Mr. Nixon said of Mr. Jones. “We’ve had a friendly relationship.”

What neither man knew until the identity of Deep Throat was revealed this week, however, was that they come from opposite sides of one of the most profound divides in modern American political history.

Mr. Nixon’s great-uncle, whom he recalls fondly as Uncle Dick, was President Richard M. Nixon, a relationship he had never shared with Mr. Jones. His grandfather, Donald Nixon, was the president’s brother.

Mr. Jones’s grandfather is W. Mark Felt, the F.B.I. source for The Washington Post who helped bring a premature end to the Nixon presidency. It was Mr. Jones who read a statement on Tuesday on behalf of Mr. Felt outside the family’s home in Santa Rosa, Calif., the first time Mr. Felt publicly acknowledged he was Deep Throat.

“When I found out who it was, it kind of put a smile on my face,” Mr. Nixon said in an interview. “It was like, ‘Hey, wait a minute, I know this guy,’ ” he said of Mr. Jones, “and he’s a good guy.'”

Since the intersection of their family histories came to light, the two men have not had the chance to speak to each other. Classes at Hastings have ended, and Mr. Nixon, who graduated two weeks ago, has been studying around the clock for the bar examination. Mr. Jones has been equally consumed by his grandfather’s newfound fame, politely keeping the news media and curiosity seekers at a distance in Santa Rosa, about 50 miles north of San Francisco.

Separately, though, the two men have also been trying the same difficult balancing act, staunchly defending their opposing family legacies while insisting in interviews that the past would not poison their own relationship.

“What he did was the right thing to do, heroic,” Mr. Jones said of his grandfather, in one of several brief exchanges with reporters. “He’s an honorable guy. He has always been guided by a real strong conscience. We stand behind him and what he did.”

Mr. Nixon, who grew up in Orange County and now lives in San Francisco, said he had been taunted and teased since elementary school about his great-uncle, the only president to resign from office.

But his parents, he said, had taught him and his brother to “look for the good in Uncle Dick,” and the family visited the former president during summer vacations when Jarett Nixon was young. He said he last saw his great-uncle in 1993 at the funeral of Patricia Nixon, the former first lady. President Nixon died in 1994 when Jarett Nixon was in high school.

“I definitely stand by my uncle, and I’m proud of him for all the good things he did with this life,” Mr. Nixon said. “He was able to accomplish a lot more than most people out there.”

Until this week, Mr. Jones said he never made the connection between his law school classmate and the former president, describing it in an interview in his driveway as “kind of fun” and a “cool and interesting factoid.”

“I still see him the same,” he said of Mr. Nixon. “I think he’s a cool guy. He seems like the kind of guy who’s going to be pretty successful in whatever he chooses to do.”

Even with the pivotal role his grandfather played in the Watergate story, Mr. Jones said he was unwilling to criticize President Nixon. He said that this is a time when “almost everyone is jumping to conclusions,” and that he did not want to do the same. “I think it’s folly, quite frankly,” he said.

Similarly, Mr. Nixon refused to pass judgment on Mr. Felt’s role as Deep Throat. He said he would have preferred if Mr. Felt had pursued his concerns about Watergate “through a more legal route,” but he had no interest in joining the debate raging on talk radio and elsewhere as to whether Mr. Felt was a hero or a traitor. He said that he had never heard of Mr. Felt until Tuesday; his family, he said, had always speculated that Deep Throat was one of his great-uncle’s secretaries.

“He made a decision and he went with it,” Mr. Nixon said of Mr. Felt. “I’m not the person to say that was something that was essentially wrong. And God knows, Uncle Dick made his mistakes too.”

Both Mr. Nixon and Mr. Jones said it was perhaps easier for them to step back from their families’ Watergate-era passions because they were generations removed from those events. As a bearer of the former president’s name, Mr. Nixon also said he had long ago learned that it was unfair to make judgments about people based on their family history.

“Everybody is here in the world to make their own way, and be their own person,” Mr. Nixon said. In that regard, he said, “I expect the same from Nick as I do from myself.”

Mr. Jones said he hoped the renewed attention on the Nixon presidency and the role his grandfather played in Watergate would make that period in history more real to Americans of his generation.

“A lot of people my age, a lot of people younger than me, don’t really know what it is all about,” he said. “It is good for us to kind of hear all about this, and learn about it, and get the lessons out of it, get the values.”

One such value, he said, had nothing to do with politics. He said he was immensely proud that as cameras around the world captured his grandfather this week, the scene depicted was the home Mr. Felt, who is 91, shared with his family.

“Our grandfather lives with us, he is happy here, he is close to his family and we get to interact every day,” Mr. Jones said. “We think that is a cool lesson.”

When asked about the connection between Mr. Jones and Mr. Nixon, Amy DerBedrosian, a spokeswoman for Hastings College, said there was a further link. Among the graduates last year was Matthew McGovern-Rowen, the grandson of former Senator George McGovern, the 1972 Democratic presidential nominee.